I had always thought that 2 degrees broadband (formally Snap) was better than all the other ISPs i.e. telecom. I have had a few minor stuff ups but normally fixed by the helpful people at the Christchurch call center. That was until this nightmare.

We had two home phone lines on our account. One was for Grandma to call on, the other was my wifes work number. My wife is about to change jobs so a couple of fridays ago I rang up to cancel the second phone.

On sunday the weirdness started. Landline didn't work so gave the helpful people a call. It's been disconnected along with the other phone they said and you will have to get a new phone number. No deal I said, Grandma will never cope. Later that day the phone started working again. All good I naively thought.

Monday the wife said the internet doesn't work so I rebooted the router, tried all the standard stuff. Called the helpful 2 degrees people, went through the whole what lights are flashing routine, reprogrammed the router etc. The finally decided it was a wiring fault so would have to log a ticket with Enable.

Next day no contact so my wife rang. Time on hold...no progress... That evening I rang, time on hold...no progress...

By this point the kids were spending lots of time outside and reading books (not such a bad thing). My wife couldn't work from home and we were out of mobile data on our phones so I brought a 5gb Skinny data pack for our mobile hotspot for $60

Wednesday we are finally starting to make progress. My wife rang during the day and after some time on hold got told they knew what the problem was and were working on it. I rang in the evening and after some time on hold got a very apologetic bloke. Sorry sir, we stuffed up. When we put through the order to disconnect the second phone to Enable our staff member has stuffed up and put through an order to disconnect your internet instead. Please have some mobile data to tide you over and when all this is sorted ring back for an account credit. Thank god for sane people although we still didn't have out internet.

Thursday my wife rang again (you have to keep nagging with these things) and got someone from 2 degrees to ring someone in Enable and rush the re-connection through. Thursday afternoon someone from Enable rang me to say they had just reconnected our fiber broadband. All hail the internet gods for they are great.

Thursday evening I rang back to arrange for the account credit. No problem sir I will lodge that with my supervisor and someone will contact you in one to two days.

No contact over the weekend so Monday I rang back. No sir, there isn't a account credit, the mobile data you already received was your compensation. Slightly annoyed by this point I asked for a call review of the last two calls because that was not what was agreed.

A couple of days later I got a voicemail from 2 degrees. This was the first time they had contacted me during this whole drama and I couldn't tell what the message was.

Today I finally got around to ringing them back. Sir, we did a call review and have credited you $4.50 for the time without service. wtf, how can this be.

Called back, more time on hold...can I talk to the supervisor...on hold...told the whole sorry tale to him...thats all we can do sir. After some painful negotiation I got them up to $35 which is less than the data pack we brought, let alone the time without service or the eight hours I spent on the phone during this drama or the fact that they denied ever offering an account credit in the first place.

So be warned, record any calls you make to the call center with an app on your phone, get the names of the people you talk to and check your billing carefully. This wasn't the first billing stuff up I have had but it was the longest and most annoying one. They still offer a good service and I understand mistakes will happen but they could at least compensate for the time and money that I spent due to their mistake.

Sadly I was a super happy Snap customer who called to change (over Sky part not Snap/2Degrees) and got totally shafted by what told (I even selected the cut off date around what told). I did everything right and even had them check the calls and no dice. I got to pay for an unused connection for 3 weeks. I respect that the larger companies have systems but being inflexible when things go wrong is why so many complaints happen. I went from 2 years a happy customer to that good wiped out by a rude inflexible person who would not accept that if I was given the wrong information I should not have to pay for something I was not using and had tried to close with plenty of warning and calls. I still even returned the modem they had sent a month or so earlier when trouble shooting my connection (brand new latest in box unopened worth over $200) and went into the local office but talk about not interested at all.

Companies pay heaps to get clients but very rarely seem to care about keeping them or their goodwill.

I had a similar instance yesterday, I cancelled my account 3 months ago obviously giving the 30 days notice and paid that month in full straight away, I got a text yesterday to say a technician would be coming out on such and such date. When I called them to ask what it was about they replied that I had only just cancelled my account.

When I told them I did that 3 months ago and that if there was any outstanding charges because of their screw up I would not be paying them, after being put on hold for 15 mins they came back and said everything was OK......

I'm guessing someone just screwed up and when they finally read the notes worked out it was their issue.

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